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Europe’s major car manufacturers, including Daimler, Volvo, Opel, Toyota,
Volkswagen, and CRF – the Research Center for Fiat Cars, together with automotive suppliers (Thyssenkrupp, Novelis, Batz,Benteler) and knowledge partners (Swerea, Inspire, Fraunhofer LBF, RWTH-IKA, KIT-IPEK, University of Florence, Bax & Company, Ricardo), all of which make up the Affordable Lightweight Automobiles (ALLIANCE) industry group, announced on November 7 the ALLIANCE Open Innovation Lightweight Challenge. The challenge aims to find innovative and affordable solutions to lightweight cars.

The ALLIANCE partners invite innovators to participate in this competition and present their lightweighting solutions in two categories: Materials and Manufacturing. The challenge is now open for registration and teams will have until January 15, 2018 to submit their innovative lightweight solutions. Participants will get technical support throughout the competition period and will have the
opportunity to pre-assess the feasibility of their technology in a virtual vehicle model used in the ALLIANCE project. A jury of industry professionals will judge the solutions on three criteria: technology quality, vehicle applicability, and compatibility with ALLIANCE.

The winners will get the chance to present their results in a dedicated presentation at the Aachen Body Engineering Days 2018 (September 18-20, 2018), and bring their technologies to a board formed by the six ALLIANCE OEMs (Daimler, Volvo, Opel, Toyota, Volkswagen, CRF – the Research Center of FCA). Submitted technologies will be included in all dissemination activities of the ALLIANCE project and presented to an extensive technical group of potential customers.
Bax & Company (Barcelona, Spain), overseeing the challenge says that the challenge is a great opportunity for Europe's innovators to work with some of the biggest car manufacturers in the world.

“ALLIANCE is addressing weight reduction in an holistic way. That means we need to work together to achieve the environmental targets. In this context, the ALLIANCE Lightweight Open Innovation Challenge truly meets these needs,” says Ahmet Dogan, Toyota Motor Europe.

ALLIANCE (Affordable Lightweight Automobiles Alliance) is a research and innovation project on automotive lightweighting, co-funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme and supported by EUCAR, the European Council for Automotive R&D. Find out more about the challenge here: